FoodTrucksMove.com is Going Live in July

Here's What's Been Happening

A few weeks ago I posted on the Pensacola subreddit asking a pretty basic question: is there a reliable way to find local food trucks without digging through five different Instagram accounts and hoping somebody updated their story that morning?

The short answer was no. The longer answer is what you're reading right now.

I've been building FoodTrucksMove.com in my spare time, and after several weeks of QA testing, community feedback, and more bug fixes than I care to count, I'm locking in a hard launch date in July. I wanted to write something more substantial than a Reddit comment to explain where things stand, what's changed, and what you can expect when the site goes fully live.

What it actually does

Food truck operators drop a pin when they park, and hungry locals can find them without having to stalk social media. That's the whole pitch.

But the devil is in the details, and over the course of testing I realized the real problem isn't just "where is the truck right now" - it's confidence. Can you trust the information you're seeing? Is it worth getting in your car?

That question drove a lot of the decisions I made during this final stretch of development.

What's new and what's been fixed

The QA period was genuinely useful. People poked at things, reported what was broken, asked questions I hadn't thought to ask myself. Here's what changed as a result:

A smarter filter panel. You can now filter trucks on the Browse page by how they're checked in: operator check-in, scheduled check-in, community sighting, or trucks that aren't currently active at all. Everything is on by default so you see the full picture, and you can narrow it down from there. This came directly from feedback about wanting to know why a truck was showing up on the map.

Transparency on unverified check-ins. If a truck appears on the map because of a community sighting or a weekly schedule, but the operator themselves hasn't checked in, you'll now see a clear amber notice right on the truck's profile page: "Not checked in by the owner. Verify hours and location before heading out." I'd rather tell you that upfront than have you drive somewhere and find an empty parking spot.

Maps in more places. The truck detail page now shows a map for schedule-based check-ins, not just live operator check-ins and community sightings. If we know a truck typically parks in a certain area on Wednesdays, that context now shows up visually.

Radius defaults to your profile. If you've set a preferred search radius in your profile, the filter panel will honor that automatically. Non-logged-in users default to 20 miles, which feels like a reasonable starting point for most use cases. Changing the radius on the filter panel is always a session-only override - it won't overwrite what you've saved in your preferences.

There were also a lot of smaller fixes like: layout issues on mobile, edge cases in the check-in flow, loading states that weren't communicating clearly, and general cleanup throughout.

You don't need an account... but you might want one

This is something I want to be clear about, because I've seen feedback on other apps where the login wall kills the experience before it even starts: you do not need to create an account to use FoodTrucksMove.com.

Open the site, and it will use your general location, accurate to within a few miles, no permission prompt required, to show you food trucks in your area. You can browse the full list, read truck profiles, filter by check-in type, search by city, and pull up the map, all without ever touching a sign-up form. If you just want tacos and you want them now, the app will get out of your way.

That said, creating a free account does unlock a few things that I think are genuinely useful.

Favorites - save the trucks you love, and they'll show up in a dedicated rail on every city and location page so your regulars are always one tap away, no matter where you're browsing.

"I've Eaten Here." Logged-in users can mark each truck with an "I've Eaten Here" count, which is a running personal tally of visits. Operators can see the aggregate count across all users, which gives them a sense of how many repeat customers they're drawing in. It's not Yelp, and it's not meant to be. It's just a quiet nod between a food truck and the people who show up.

Your favorites on every page. When you're browsing trucks in a different city or filtering by cuisine type, your favorited trucks stay visible at the top of the screen. You won't lose track of the trucks that matter to you just because you're looking at a broader list.

Notification preferences. Logged-in users can set a preferred travel radius and, down the road, will be able to receive push & email alerts when a favorited truck checks in within that distance. That feature is still in progress, but it's coming.

The bottom line is that the app is fully functional without an account, and I'm not going to change that. The account benefits are genuinely additive, meaning they are there for people who want a more personalized experience, not as a gatekeeper for the core features.

For truck operators

If you operate a food truck in the Pensacola area, I want to make this worth your while: Joining is free, and it's staying free. Your listing gets a dedicated profile page with your hero image, description, menu tags, cuisine types, social links, and a schedule. When you check in, your truck appears on the map for people searching nearby, including anonymous users.

Operators who join within the first month of going live will receive Plankholder status: a unique badge on their profile. This is my way of acknowledging the people who took a chance on something early, before it had much of a track record. There will likely be some additional benefits tied to that status down the road, although I'm still figuring out exactly what those look like.

You'll also have access to basic analytics like views, clicks, favorites, and how many people have marked your truck with the "I've Eaten Here" badge. Nothing fancy, but it's the kind of signal that tells you whether the platform is doing anything for you or not.

A word on what this is

This is a bootstrap project. It runs on scalable, free-tier infrastructure. I built it in my spare time because I was frustrated with a problem and decided to do something about it rather than wait for someone else to fix it, which just wasn't happening.

I'm not a startup. I don't have investors. I'm a person who lives here, eats street food, and thought our local food truck scene deserved better tools. The Pensacola community's response to the beta has been genuinely humbling and it's what made me push through the parts of this that were tedious and hard.

The app's not perfect. It'll have bugs, and I'll fix them. That's the deal.

What's next

July launch. If you're a truck operator and want to get set up before that date, go create an account, and either claim your existing truck, or create a truck.

If you're a regular person who just wants to find tacos on a Friday, you won't need an account to do that, so just open the site and let it do its thing.

Thanks to everyone who tested, reported bugs, left feedback in the comments, and shared the posts. You made this better.

See you out there.

- FoodTrucksMove.com